Copyright 1986 by Walter Jon Williams Chapter One

"Don't go," he says. "Don't leave me here again."

"Roll over on your side." She washes his back, the deep white hollow between his shoulder

blades.

Mexico. Maybe they'll be able to patch you right through to me, maybe not. But I'll get the

message and call you from wherever I am. Okay?"

"Whatever you say."' Dully, pretending not to care.

"I'll give you the number," Sarah says. "You're going to have to memorize it. I can't ever

write it down. And you can't call from this room. Your phone might still be monitored. You'll have

to get in your wheelchair and go down to the waiting room and use the phone there. I'll give you a

credit needle so you can use it. Understand?"

"Yes. I understand." Daud's voice is a whisper. He reaches to the table for a towel and

snatches it, but he's using the new left arm and the movement lacks precision. The towel unfolds

and Sarah sees the flash of crystal and metal in the instant before a vial strikes the floor and

dances under the table. The cold rattle of glass on tile seems to last for a long time. Sarah

feels the chill touch of metal on her nerves.

"No," Daud says. "It's mine. Don't look."

He gives a little moan as she reaches for the vial, as she brings it up to the light.

Polymyxin-phenildorphin Nu, solution of 12 percent. At his old level, it should last him about a

day. Less now. Not a surprise, now that she thinks about it.

Daud whimpers as she searches the towels and the bed, finding another new vial and one

near-empty vial under his pillow. "No," he says. "Look. Joseph was just doing me a favor." He

looks at the coldness in her face and falls silent.

"You don't have any money, Daud," she says. "How'd you pay for it?"

He clamps his mouth shut and shakes his head. Sarah feels the towel in her hands, and she

flicks it in his face. He jerks his head back, his lips trembling.

"Tell me."

He swallows, tries to turn his head away. Sarah flicks the towel again. It makes a hard

sound in the air.

"Look," he says, "they just add the cost to the-the hospital bill. Disguised charges.

Joseph has a friend at the desk. You would never have known. " He begins to talk fast. "I've been

making such progress since, Sarah. I really have."

"I'm moving you out of this place. A recovery hospital somewhere. You don't need full care

anymore."

"Sarah."

"Don't." She raises a hand clenched around a towel, feeling the anger making her fist

tremble. She balls the towel up and flings it into a corner of the room, then spins and stalks

into the corridor.

She finds Joseph in another room, washing the gaunt corded muscles of an accident victim

who has both his legs raised in traction. "Hey, Joseph," she calls, and sends one of the vials at

his head. He ducks, his eyes wide, and the vial splinters against the wall. The room fills with a

glycerine chemical smell.

Sarah's moving too fast for him to dodge. The first kick catches his midsection; the

second, his face. He goes down and she stands astride him, her hands seizing his collar, holding

it tight, cutting into the skin around his neck. "Joseph," she says, "I should fire the rest into

your veins. How'd you like a nice endorphin overdose, hey?"

The accident victim is scrambling with his one good hand for the emergency cable. Sarah

drops the bearded nurse and gently takes the emergency cord and puts it out of reach. Joseph puts

a hand to his throat and gasps for breath.

Sarah turns to him. "Stay away from my brother, Joseph," she says. "He doesn't need you,

or the things that you hide in his towels."

"I was just-"

Sarah slaps him hard across the face. She can feel the man in the bed flinch at the sound.

"Just follow instructions, Joseph. My brother doesn't get any of the drugs you're selling,

and the price of what you've sold him comes off my bill. Don't say anything, just nod yes or no."

Joseph looks up at her, gives a slow nod.

(85 of 137) [7/17/03 11:28:34 PM]

Sarah straightens, takes the emergency cable and puts it in the hand of the accident

victim. "Sorry," she says. "I just had to reach an accommodation with the local 'dorphin dealer."

She looks into his surprised eyes. "Check your bill carefully before you pay it. Joseph here may

have added some of his disguised charges."

She turns and leaves the room, the smoldering anger turning to sadness. She can't keep

Daud away from the endorphins, not even if she stays with him. They're a part of what keeps him

alive now. He's got nothing to look forward to but the next injection, nothing but a visit from

his sister-and Sarah wants only to make him feel again, to bring him back to the world of pain,

where nothing stands between him and the city. No wonder, she thinks, that he made his deal with

Joseph. She's a part of the city, the city that wants him. Joseph was his only chance to get away.

Chapter Thirteen

"Dodger?" Cowboy looks at the phone in surprise.

"Who else?" says the Dodger.

Cowboy grins at the sound of the Dodger's voice. "I'm glad to hear you're out. I hope your

Flash Force people are keeping as good an eye on you as they are on me."

"Nothing to worry about there." Cowboy hears the sound of chewing tobacco being shifted

from one cheek to the other. "Some of their mercs tried to set up an ambush down Mora way, on old

Bob Aguilar's land. I must've heard from half a dozen people about it; Bob in particular, so we

hired an extra platoon for one afternoon and took them out. A wired fight, lasted about ten

minutes all told. Had to lock Jimi in the bathroom so he wouldn't jump in his panzer and join the

war. I don't think our friends'll be coming into the mountains again. Strangers are too

conspicuous up here."

Cowboy laughs and offers his congratulations. He's talking from a public phone at the

Orlando port of entry to the Randolph Scott accommodation link in Santa Fe. His phone-in time was

set up in advance, giving the Dodger's people time to instruct the Randolph Scott number to

forward the call to Mora or Eagle Nest or whatever public phone the Dodger was standing by.

"The meet with Roon's still set up for tomorrow," Cowboy says. "I've got a cube holding

the instructions for the treaty we're going to cut. Ready to receive?"

"Anytime, Cowboy."

Cowboy snaps the trapdoor shut over the cube and fires the data to New Mexico. Dodger's

voice informs him that he's got the treaty in his crystal.

"Michael got hit bad last night," Cowboy says. "One of his people went over to the other

side, took his crowd along and a warehouseful of hearts and antibiotics. "

"We've been doing a little better thisaway." In spite of the news the Dodger's voice seems

full of good cheer. Probably, Cowboy thinks, because it's the first time he's left his house in

months.

flares in Cowboy's mind. The panzerboys, following his lead. They could shut Arkady's machine down

cold. "After Jimi did...what he did...Arkady started insisting on one of his people going along on

every run, riding shotgun inside the delivery vehicle. That didn't sit well with the drivers. And

after Arkady's plane crash his people got even more nervous. It seems Arkady's replacement showed

up real quick."

Cowboy's lips draw back from his teeth. Tempel was showing its hand. "Anyone we know?" he

asks.

to time, but they didn't know who he was. He's not Russian, and Arkady's Russians don't like him."

"Think they'll change their minds about who the good guys are?"

Cowboy can sense the Dodger's shrug in the sound of his voice. "The Russians are so

paranoid and treacherous that I reckon anything could happen. But Calvert knows Arkady's people

too well, knows where they live and who they associate with. They're vulnerable to him, but they

don't know him at all, or how to touch him. He's a bad man, this Calvert. Nobody wants to cross

him, not after they've met him. And he brought a new crowd in, Orbital people. He says he'll start

his own people running across the Line if the regular express riders stop working for him."

"Then hell lose a lot of cargo."

"It's pocket change to these people, Cowboy. If they figure there's a profit in the long

run, they can afford to lose for years and years. We can't."

Cowboy rubs his chin. He feels a warning prickle on the back of his neck. "What does this

Calvert look like?"

(86 of 137) [7/17/03 11:28:34 PM]

"Medium height. Real hard. Talks in a kind of whisper. Looks like he started out as a

mudboy before he went up the well."

Cowboy's eyes rise to Sarah standing five yards away, kicking absently at the passenger

port's granite paving while she waits for Cowboy to finish. "I think this boy's known as

Cunningham out here, Dodger," he says. "He's working this side of the war, too."

"That possibility had occurred to me, Cowboy. If it's true, he's a busy man."

"We'll try and make him busier."

"That we will." The Dodger clears his throat. "Warren says to tell you he's got the sixth

delta ready to fly. Word has it that Arkady's people are trying to put deltas together from

whatever spare parts they can find. Nice of you to corner the market before you flew against

Arkady. "

"Nostalgia has its uses," Cowboy says. On the display over his head he can see the

blinking light that means his shuttle is boarding.

After he says adios to the Dodger, he waves good-bye to the Flash Force guards at the

gate.

If Roon is treacherous, he and Sarah will die. The Flash Force won't make a particle's worth of

difference, except in the number of bodies.

Chapter Fourteen

Roon's home, Cowboy thinks, is a tesseract, coiling in on itself with the logic of a

neverending nightmare. A black and silver dream invading Cowboy's mind, burning through his

crystal. Imposing its architecture upon him, its logic, its pattern. He is lost in it, helpless in

the swirl of time.

"Earth," Roon says. His kohl-rimmed eyes are moist. "I was born in the well. Matured in

orbit. Was reborn in crystal. Until then I did not understand."

Across the table Cowboy can smell the foulness of his breath. Roon reaches out a trembling

hand to touch the short fair hair of the little girl that holds his wineglass. Cowboy sees her

start, sees her eyes widen, her mouth open in a hushed intake of breath, prelude to a scream that

never comes. "I understand how we may work together," Roon says. "You and Earth are the past. I

and the sky are the present. You are mud, I am vision. I wish to mold the Earth, to form it in the

proper image. Build an architecture for the future."

The sweat of fear gathers under Cowboy's collar. He looks at the crystal glass in his

hand, pictures the ease with which he can bring the glass down on the edge of the table, the way

the cut glass will sing as the shards skate across the polished hardwood and between the priceless

petroleum-plastic dishes, the razor-edged fragments inverting the world as they mirror the

shadowed airy ceiling, the look in the little girl's wide, fearful eyes, the pulse in Roon's

throat as Cowboy lunges across the table with the sharp crystal in his hand, finally the bright

arterial blood as it pools on the table, welling up around the scattered crystal worlds,

extinguishing each miniature light in a rising scarlet tide...

The anticipated movement quavers in Cowboy's hand. He tightens his grip on the glass to

end the shiver. The water in the glass trembles, reflects the lights above in a crescent like the

rim of a distant world.

He looks up at Sarah, seeing her impassive face, her carefully veiled eyes. Thinks of the

murderous thing in her throat and the madness it implies. Madness of the world, or Sarah's? Both

at once? He wonders what she would do if he makes his move, whether the cybersnake would flicker

out at Roon, or in Roon's defense.

He lowers the crystal goblet to the table, pulls his hand back to his lap, clasps it with

the other to stop their shaking. What difference will it make? he thinks, and knows that he has

made his first compromise with this madness, this horror.

"What I do I do with love," Roon says. He strokes the hair of the little girl. Tears trace

kohl down his beardless cheeks. "I love you all, as a father does his children. I love you very

much."

The long tube of the Florida-Venezuela Free Zone suborbital shuttle is full of Orbital

and a blend of Occupied America drawn from professions wealthy enough to afford air travel,

hustlers and gamblers wearing cryo max, snagboys with a feigned nonchalance and booby-trapped

satchels handcuffed to their wrists, officials of the collaborationist governments who sit in

(87 of 137) [7/17/03 11:28:34 PM]

sweating isolation between the indifferent bloc execs and the hustlers with their carnivore

smiles.

Cowboy looks down at the curving horizon against the black sky, the blue ceramic rim of

earth softened by the translucent haze of atmosphere. Below him are clouds in implausibly neat

rows, wedged above a warm front moving in on the Lesser Antilles, the dusty island brown and green

perched on the edge of the glowing turquoise sea. When the shuttle begins its slow fall to Earth,

he can feel his body straining against the straps, trying to continue its climb, but the well has

the shuttle in its grip again, and his body, too, begins its fall. He turns to Sarah in the next

seat, seeing the yearning in her dark eyes as she gazes out of the port, a desire that matches his

own longing for the black airless purity... "Damn them," she whispers, shaking her head, and he

knows without asking who she's talking about.

The shuttle buffets slightly as it arrows to its landing in La Gran Sabana, the high

Venezuelan plateau near the equator where the Orbitals have built their largest spaceport. The

green land seems wrinkled as a baby's skin, cut by rivers that look like drops of quicksilver

strung on a necklace. Cowboy can see the long jagged mesa edge of Roraima bulking off the port

side as the shuttle drops and touches gently on the concrete and alloy floor of the well.

"The architecture of earth always strove for the heavens. Think of the ziggurats of

Babylon, the pyramids of Egypt. The cathedrals of the Middle Ages, the pagodas of China. Fingers

pointing out of the well, toward liberation." Roon shakes his head. "It's no longer necessary.

Humankind has reached for heaven and has found it. But those who live in the sky have become

divorced from those who still live in the soil. A new vision is demanded, and with it a new

architecture. Like this place, a metaphor for the fusion of earth and sky. Dominating even the

mountain upon which it rests.

"Architecture has become my passion," Roon says. Cowboy and Sarah follow him down the

coils of his home, along humming alloy corridors, beneath the holographic eyes of Earth's

children. Roon raises a finger. "Architecture in all its forms. Including the architecture of the

perfect crystal, of the data in the heart of the machine. There is the true medium. In the past

humankind has been inhibited by the sympathy of flesh for flesh, by each person's sympathetic

understanding of another's own organic weakness. Now we can integrate our consciousness with the

immaculate perfection of data. The barriers of Earth are dissolved. No flesh can stand before the

supremacy of numbers. Sympathetic action is no longer a possibility. The crystal recognizes only

the logic of necessity.

"Necessity," Roon repeats, and he looks at them with his painted eyes. "Necessity is the

same, in the crystal world, as inevitability. All that is necessary will become, whatever your

feelings, your actions." He smiles. "As my return to power is inevitable. As your own crystal

hearts are wise enough to tell you."

Roon lives far to the west of the landing port in La Gran Sabana, across the country in

the Cordillera Oriental. For Cowboy and Sarah he's laid on private transport, a jet painted as

black as the Orbital sky save for the blue Tempel logo above each canard. A dirtgirl in a uniform

rushes to carry their bags to the craft. The pilot is a jock with a spaceborn gliding walk, a cold

slight man with the company patches on his jacket and pebble Japanese eyes; he looks at Cowboy

with a frigid contempt and talks in monosyllables. Cowboy's anger rises; he can feel the crystal

burning in his brain while his shoulders ache as if with the tension of wrestling a delta, and he

wants badly to meet this man in the sky, to match Pony Express against the jock's Orbital cutter.

Cowboy can see Sarah's face going rigid, her hands coiling as they try to become claws, and he

knows she's thinking of the sweating streets of her own city, placing the jock amid the humid

monster of the night.

The flight lasts only twenty minutes, the plane arrowing straight across the country in a

quiet so absolute it seems as if the air itself can't touch its mirror-obsidian skin. Cowboy feels

envy for the craft, wishes to feel her studs in his skull. Sarah rises from her seat to

investigate the aircraft's bar.

Cowboy shakes his head at her offer and she comes back with a rum and lime, drinks in the

silence, the clink of ice the loudest sound in the plane. Cowboy looks down at the dark green land

blighted by the brown of erosion, the silver rivers choking, turning dark with topsoil. The black

needle threads through cloud. From above the Sierra Nevada, Cowboy can see Roon's palace shining

silver among the tall green slopes, a piece of Orbital alloy and crystal jacked into the earth.

A peak interposes: the gleam is gone. The plane is banking among mountains, twisting

silently down a valley. Sarah's ice cubes sing at the touchdown, but Cowboy can scarcely feel the

impact. He looks up at the surrounding mountains for the flash of silver and sees Roon's beacon

(88 of 137) [7/17/03 11:28:35 PM]

gleaming through the trees...

Through a holographic door that evaporates as it senses his presence, Roon has taken them

into a room alive with holographs of crystal, changing, growing, interlocking. Their brightness

gleams in Roon's eyes, in the eyes of the two children who stand motionless before a comp

terminal. The girl is about ten, olive-skinned, wearing a white dress. The boy is in a white shirt

and dark trousers. Both are barefoot. Their dark hair is cut short around the sockets in their

heads. Tutorial programs flicker on the crystal displays.

"This is Lupe," Roon says. "I named her for her wolf's eyes. Her brother is Raul." He

looks down at them and smiles.

"They are my oldest acolytes, here in my temple," Roon says. "I found them in the streets,

living like little rodents. Not a human existence at all. Their parents were dead, their relatives

were indifferent. Chances are they would have died of malnutrition or disease before they grew to

maturity. If they lived, they would have been on the fringes, turned criminal, addicts, perhaps

sold themselves. The girl might have borne half a dozen children before she was twenty." He shakes

his head. "Now their possibilities are...unlimited. I feed them, educate them. Impress upon them

the pattern that they, that the Earth, must follow." He looks down again at the children.

"Raul was born just after the war. Has lived his whole life amid the new order. New clay,

to be shaped by Orbital hands." His eyes rise to look at Sarah and Cowboy. "The older ones-they've

absorbed too many of the obsolete views of their parents. Their minds resist the new teaching, the

will of the teacher. With these..." He smiles down at them sweetly, proudly, as he raises his

hands in a gesture of benediction, of possession. Tutorials flash out from the matrix. "These can

lead Earth through its time of changes. To its new relationship with the heavens."

He looks up at Cowboy. His gelid eyes gaze out of kohl-rimmed skull sockets. "You have

seen the upright way I have taught them to stand," he says. "Like soldiers at attention.

Disciplined. Obedient, but proud in their subservience." His eyes radiate joy. His foul breath

drifts in the room. "The new relationship," he says. "The pattern to which the future will

adhere."

The jock doesn't even look at them as he steps from his cabin and presses the button that

opens the pressure door and drops the spindly alloy ladder. He pushes his fists into the pockets

of his jacket and steps out on the ladder, heading for the pilot's lounge. Sarah looks up. "Hey,"

she says. Her voice cuts the air like a razor.

The jock turns and stands half in the door.

"You forgot our bags," Sarah says.

The jock's face is stone. Cowboy feels a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"It's not my job," the jock says.

"It's your job to keep Mr. Roon's guests happy," Sarah says. "Mr. Roon's guests do not.

Carry. Their. Own. Fucking. Bags." Her eyes are colder than the drink in her hand, her grin a

tiger's.

Blood rises into the jock's face. He hunches into his jacket and reaches into the baggage

compartment. Sarah stands and smiles with frigid sweetness. "Thanks very much." Cowboy follows her

out.

runway apron. Smoking a caffeine stick and leaning on the car is what Cowboy can recognize by now

as a mudboy mercenary bodyguard, a broad-shouldered man dressed neatly with matching handkerchief

and braces. He opens the cargo compartment and watches the jock push the bags inside.

Sarah drops a silver coin into the jock's hands and sees his jaw muscles clench. Cowboy

can't help but grin. As the jock stalks away Cowboy can hear the sound of metal skiddering on the

surface. The mercenary seems to be amused by the jock's anger.

"I'm Gorman," he says, and opens the helicopter's door.

"Infiltration," says Roon. "Interpenetration of attacker and target. The coiling of